3 ms·

The rsync.net warrant canary has been issued monthly, with news headlines, for over ten years now.[1][2] We split it for each location - SanDiego/Denver/Zurich

by rsync 10y ago

The rsync.net warrant canary has been issued monthly, with news headlines, for over ten years now.[1][2] We split it for each location - SanDiego/Denver/Zurich/HongKong. Further, the individual location canaries can be retrieved from the actual storage array itself - that is, you can just fetch it via sftp/scp/rsync/whatever from (whatever system your account is on). Finally, our canary is machine readable/parseable and nicely formatted. So much so that the maintainer of "Canary Watch" has told me that he wishes all warrant canaries followed our original format. Oh By[3] will have a similar canary soon, modeled exactly after the rsync.net warrant canary. [1] https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt [2] http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2010/08/the-warrant-canary-in-2010-and-beyond.html http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2010/08/the-warrant-can... [3] https://0x.co https://0x.co

res0nat0r 10y ago
Can you comment on if you believe these to be actually effective? I don't see how when the USG says that you cannot divulge that you've received any type of NSL, they can easily say you must continue to act like you have in the past. I just don't see a court or a judge upholding a "cute" or "technical" workaround for something like this. Haven't there been rulings in the past where these aren't valid, ie just like the article above once you do get NSL's etc you must take them down or be at risk of non compilance?
- rsync 10y ago
  "Can you comment on if you believe these to be actually effective? I don't see how when the USG says that you cannot divulge that you've received any type of NSL, they can easily say you must continue to act like you have in the past." The entire basis of the warrant canary is that it's not simply asking me to stop doing something, but rather, a judge would have to order me to make false public statements. That's a tough thing to imagine - certainly on any continued basis. Even in that situation, how will they force a swiss national to update the swiss location ? There's no jurisdiction there. I don't see it as a technical workaround at all - it is completely non-technical. Can the government compel my speech ? Can the government compel me to make false statements ?
  - pdabbadabba 10y ago
    > Can the government compel my speech ? Can the government compel me to make false statements ? These are interesting questions, but I'm not at all sure the answer is not 'yes' to both of them, under the right circumstances. The Fifth Amendment would not seem to imply (there's no criminal proceeding, and not necessarily any risk of self-incrimination) and the First Amendment, while applicable, would not necessarily prevent such a thing, in my estimation, if the circumstances were (in the government's estimation) sufficiently dire. Alternatively, in some cases the USG could simply seize the domain name and/or server and serve up any content they wanted. See, e.g., Playpen. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/after-fbi-briefly-ran-tor-hidden-child-porn-site-investigations-went-global/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/after-fbi-briefly... Though presumably they could not do this if the site or service operator were not also implicated in some form of illegal activity.
    - Kluny 10y ago
      > These are interesting questions, but I'm not at all sure the answer is not 'yes' to both of them, under the right circumstances. That may be true, but it would remove any moral ambiguity for me and make it easy for me to stick to my principle. If a judge orders me to make a false public statement, I'll disobey, and accept the consequences. No further justification is needed.
    - jsprogrammer 10y ago
      Freedom of speech entails the freedom to speak only your mind. No one has a valid claim to compel your speech. What sufficiently dire circumstance can there be where a government would have the right to compel speech? I think the 13th amendment would come into play here as well.
      - colejohnson66 10y ago
        > What sufficiently dire circumstance can there be where a government would have the right to compel speech? "national security"
      - 10y ago
- morgante 10y ago
  The whole point of warrant canaries is that while a judge can compel you to not say something, compelling speech is a much higher burden.

by rsync 10y ago

res0nat0r 10y ago

Can you comment on if you believe these to be actually effective? I don't see how when the USG says that you cannot divulge that you've received any type of NSL, they can easily say you must continue to act like you have in the past. I just don't see a court or a judge upholding a "cute" or "technical" workaround for something like this. Haven't there been rulings in the past where these aren't valid, ie just like the article above once you do get NSL's etc you must take them down or be at risk of non compilance?

rsync 10y ago
"Can you comment on if you believe these to be actually effective? I don't see how when the USG says that you cannot divulge that you've received any type of NSL, they can easily say you must continue to act like you have in the past." The entire basis of the warrant canary is that it's not simply asking me to stop doing something, but rather, a judge would have to order me to make false public statements. That's a tough thing to imagine - certainly on any continued basis. Even in that situation, how will they force a swiss national to update the swiss location ? There's no jurisdiction there. I don't see it as a technical workaround at all - it is completely non-technical. Can the government compel my speech ? Can the government compel me to make false statements ?
- pdabbadabba 10y ago
  > Can the government compel my speech ? Can the government compel me to make false statements ? These are interesting questions, but I'm not at all sure the answer is not 'yes' to both of them, under the right circumstances. The Fifth Amendment would not seem to imply (there's no criminal proceeding, and not necessarily any risk of self-incrimination) and the First Amendment, while applicable, would not necessarily prevent such a thing, in my estimation, if the circumstances were (in the government's estimation) sufficiently dire. Alternatively, in some cases the USG could simply seize the domain name and/or server and serve up any content they wanted. See, e.g., Playpen. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/after-fbi-briefly-ran-tor-hidden-child-porn-site-investigations-went-global/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/after-fbi-briefly... Though presumably they could not do this if the site or service operator were not also implicated in some form of illegal activity.
  - Kluny 10y ago
    > These are interesting questions, but I'm not at all sure the answer is not 'yes' to both of them, under the right circumstances. That may be true, but it would remove any moral ambiguity for me and make it easy for me to stick to my principle. If a judge orders me to make a false public statement, I'll disobey, and accept the consequences. No further justification is needed.
  - jsprogrammer 10y ago
    Freedom of speech entails the freedom to speak only your mind. No one has a valid claim to compel your speech. What sufficiently dire circumstance can there be where a government would have the right to compel speech? I think the 13th amendment would come into play here as well.
    - colejohnson66 10y ago
      > What sufficiently dire circumstance can there be where a government would have the right to compel speech? "national security"
    - 10y ago
morgante 10y ago
The whole point of warrant canaries is that while a judge can compel you to not say something, compelling speech is a much higher burden.